


Before the Dawn

by Midgetdragon7x, Scilera



Series: Dragon Age: Apocalypse [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Dragon Age: Apocalypse, Foreshadowing, Gen, Prologue, myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midgetdragon7x/pseuds/Midgetdragon7x, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scilera/pseuds/Scilera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are legends told around the camp fires of every Dalish clan on Thedas, but clan Lavellan in the Free Marches has a slightly different spin on them than most.  </p><p>This is a small peek into the foundations of the lore for the Dragon Age: Apocalypse series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before the Dawn

In the Vimmark Mountains – roughly somewhere halfway between Kirkwall and Ostwick – there was a tree.  It was old; even those among the People with the weakest connection to such things could _feel_ the ancient majesty it gave off.  It was frightening for some, a mystery they could not hope to know or comprehend.  To others it brought sadness, melancholy – a reminder of all that had been lost and how low they had fallen.  A few were made angry by its presence, feeling keenly the shackles placed around their potential like great roots anchoring them immovably to their aravels and the movement that was as constant as the wind.  To some, however, this tree – a rare constant in their lives of endless motion – brought hope.  Once upon a time they had roots to this earth and they could have them again.

The Lavellan clan passed it twice a year in their circuitous journeys about the Free Marches.  They made their camp among great roots and under heavy branches which seemed to wrap around them in a warm embrace.  No matter how uncomfortable some were made by it, no one ever doubted their safety here.  This place was sacred – hallowed in a way so few places still were.  It was only here, shrouded in the noisy silence of the groaning trunk and the whispering leaves – that Keeper Deshanna would tell the Tale of Beginnings. 

Often when they stopped and made camp, Deshanna would invite the clan around the fire to choose their evening stories.  It was important to give them something more than the dusty road they’d just walked.  It let their minds rest as well as their bodies.  Everyone had their favorites and some were more popular than others, but Deshanna never turned down a request _except_ for this one.  There was only one place left open to them where this story could be told and so it was to an eager crowd larger than most that Deshanna settled her old bones and began her tale, green eyes turned to gold by the fire.

__________________

_In the beginning of Time, there was only darkness.  The Darkness had always existed but it was not a whole, a single entity.  Within the Darkness there were two worlds as though wombs of two mothers.  There was Order and there was Chaos.  The womb of one bore the stars, though they were not as we know them now.  Young and foolish and drunk on their newfound power, these stars gave no light, only heat and destruction.  The womb of the other bore land – solid, immovable, unshaken.  It was steady and calm and peaceful, but it was barren and bore nothing._

_There was a mountain on the land higher than any others.  It was so close to the cold and empty Void that it alone could hear the cries of the young stars in the night.  The cruelty in their voices made it afraid, but the loneliness in them resonated with it so strongly that eventually the mountain lost its order, its control.  It cried out to the Void with a single, clear note.  The stars heard and for the first time in their existence they knew fear.  All except for one._

_One star heard in the mountain’s cry the match for its own pain – a way to describe what had been before indescribable.  This star gathered all of its fearsome power and flung itself through the empty Void toward the source of that single note.  With nothing to stop it, the young star flew through the nothingness and did not know – had no way of knowing – when it approached the source of the sound.  So great was its speed that when it impacted with the great mountain, it broke the peak from the base and consumed it to its own core.  Never before had chaos touched order; never before had order touched chaos.  The two became one, exploding into the first light existence had ever seen.  From their union was born Elgar’nan and in the core of his fiery heart burned only a small piece of the mountain – the very tip of the peak.   The sun shone down on the earth now, giving life to its barren soil.  And for a time, Elgar’nan was content simply to shepherd the things that now grew._

_Over the centuries, however, Elgar’nan grew prideful.  He had discovered the sound of his own voice and come to enjoy it so much that he no longer listened to the joined voices of the sun and the earth – the ancient order and chaos from which he had come.  He came to believe that the wonders growing from the earth – those that moved and those which were still – had been his work and his alone.  His pride offended his parents and their anger rose up in a great heat, turning the world around him to so much ash._

_In an earlier time, the destruction may have had its intended reaction; it may indeed have brought Elgar’nan up short and made him reconsider his own behavior.  But he had grown too far from his roots.  He knew only fury that anyone would **dare** to touch what he had declared his.  Lost to his anger, he reached into the sky and took hold of that which had given him life, flinging one from the other and plunging everything into darkness once more._

_This gave the earth great pain, for not only had it witnessed the destruction of all its children save the eldest, but with the loss of its mate there was no light and no hope for regrowth.  There would be only despair, now.  The earth cried in its grief and from those tears were born the great seas.  For many ages, there was only weeping to break the darkness, for even the fire in the heart of Elgar’nan could not pierce this darkness._

_From the seas, however, another child was born.  Mythal, daughter born of the mournful earth when touched by the last piece of its lost mate as it fell, rose from the sea like the tide.  She left the waters which had been her cradle and sang her siren’s song as she journeyed across her mother’s blackened corpse.  Elgar’nan heard her song and in the manner of the generation before, he was drawn to it.  Mythal found him and with the cool touch of her hand she calmed the fire of his anger.  Her kiss brought peace to his brow.  It was by her advocacy and through her assistance that their parents were rejoined and the sun once again gave its light to the earth._

_But nothing once broken can ever be exactly restored.  The sun had been cast down for so long that there were now two places to which it belonged.  Though it wanted desperately to stay close to its own beloved, as each day drew to a close, it would lose the battle with fatigue and its own nature and return to the Void below the horizon.  There it would linger for some hours before regaining the strength to make the climb back to its beloved once more.  Elgar’nan saw this and knew it was his doing.  For the first time in his life, he knew shame and remorse.  But this too Mythal would heal.  Gathering a handful of ashes from the Great Burning, she lifted her other hand to the sky and brushed her fingertips inside the sun’s flame.  This she brought down to stir within the very core of the ash, adding her own magic and spinning the two into the pale, gentle moon.  This she set in counterpoint to the sun’s journey so that it could reflect the sun’s glory and remind all things which grew on the earth that they would never be left to the empty darkness again._

_It is for this reason that the moon is sometimes called Telu._

_Balance had at last been restored to the world and in the years that followed, more beings like Mythal and Elgar’nan came into being.  Some of them we know by name – such as Falon’Din and Andruil – and others we have forgotten, but they each had something of value to teach the People.  By their sides we grew in safety, as children in the shadows of their parents.  For a time, everything flourished, but nothing lasts forever._

__________________

When the fires had dwindled to embers, coals to warm the air between the aravels – when the first watch had been set and most of Lavellan slept peacefully within the aravels – Keeper Deshanna made the second half of her journey to tell the second half of her story.  There was a path hidden in the mountainside that would take her to the great tree’s crest.  It was a long and narrow way, a journey that demanded caution or her life.  By the time she reached its end and took the first step onto the wide, wooden branch, _Telu_ had passed its zenith and shone pale light at the perfect angle to light her careful progress.  When she reached the trunk, Deshanna unshouldered her pack and sat down on it – a cushion between her old bones and the unforgiving wood beneath her.

__________________

_One such soul came into being in a most unusual way._

_The stars which had once all been dark and cruel and pained had one by one had occasion to take into themselves pieces of earth – though not all from the same place or in the same way – but there were some who refused to change, to lose what they were and become the beacons of light within the darkness.  Some refused out of pride or anger or simple sloth, but there was one star who refused its brother’s change because it could sense the shackles that came with order, the boundaries imposed upon the boundless and it was afraid.  This was not fear as we know it – not the panic of a moment or the tension that causes everything to be startling – but something soul-deep and changing.  The closest we can know of this fear is when we look into the eyes of a wild animal in a trap, who knows it has been cornered and struggles with a seemingly impossible might to free itself once more._

_But even the wildest creature cannot run forever._

_This star flung itself into the farthest reaches of the Void to flee the others who would impose their change upon it.  There it found others like itself; for one reason or another, all who lived in that place had avoided the change.  They were wholly chaos – the last untainted original children – and they would remain that way.  At first the star was relieved, for it believed that here it would be safe from the chains that haunted it, but as it drew further in, it could see that this was no haven.  One star – proud and vicious and cruel – had convinced another to join with it, to add its power to the first so that they might never be subject to the tainted Lightbringers.  Others had followed suit, until there was no star left with a will of its own; they were all bound to the first.  This was no freedom, only a cage of a different kind._

_There was nowhere left in the Void to run, but the fearful star would no more surrender its freedom to the darkness than it would to the light.  There was a great and terrible battle.  In the end, both it and the Souleater star were destroyed.  The last pure children of the very first birth were no more.  But from that destruction, that explosion of energy, a great cosmic wind blew out in all directions.  This wind struck the storm clouds over the earth, mixing with the earthly winds as well as the fragments of water, ice, dust and rock that tumbled within.  Lightning danced among the two forces as they mingled and when finally a single great bolt struck the ground, it left a child in its wake._

_And so Daern’Thal was born, a creature almost entirely of wildness and freedom, with only tiny fragments of order embedded in her soul.  The tigers of Tevinter were her children, as were the great eagles of the Anderfels and the pods of Leviathan who roamed the seas.  She was not inherently evil – none of the Forgotten Ones were, no more than the Creators were inherently good – but her refusal to abide by the constricting laws necessary to any society made her feared and hated among those that would see great cities and nations built.  Daern’Thal would follow only a handful of rules.  She called them Natural Laws and they were the only things that bound her._

_She first saw Mythal while dancing with the Leviathan among the whitecaps.  There was beauty in the way she moved.  Nothing restrained her, but there was a defiance and a purpose to her movements that captivated Daern’Thal entirely.  She made herself known to Mythal, who found joy and delight in the open honesty of the wild thing, in her independent spirit and her inability to submit.  There was deep care and admiration between them, but their very natures were so diametrically opposed that they could not linger long in the other’s presence._

_The two spirits – arguably the most powerful still in existence – came together one final time in a desperate attempt to circumvent the forces which drove them further and further apart.  Their magic and their love spun into being an entirely new kind of spirit.  Together they created Fen’Harel, from whom all wolves descend.  He was the balance that soothed them both and kept their differences from creating distance.  The three of them were absolutely inseparable and for many ages they knew only joy._

_But Elgar’nan was envious.  Mythal had once, he thought, belonged to him.  It was to him she owed her allegiance, her attention and her affection.  He was Elgar’nan!  He was the Father of All!  He would not come second to anyone or anything, especially not foul creatures such as those that would taint **his** beloved!  Once more, Elgar’nan was blinded by the sound of his own voice and it drove him to a pact that would doom the world. _  

__________________

As Deshanna finished her tale, she felt a great weariness come over her.  It was the fifty-eighth time she had completed this particular journey, told this particular tale.  She knew – somewhere deep in her heart – that she would not make many more.  Her staff assisted her in standing, but she did not leave just yet.  Instead she took the last two steps toward the trunk and bent to rest her forehead against the wood.  As her eyes slid closed she could hear a heartbeat not her own, could see the girl curled within the trunk like a babe within the womb.  The smile on her mouth then was a mother’s smile, sweet and yet sad. 

“ _Ar’lath ma vhenan_ ,” she whispered.  “You were wronged as they were wronged and she can give you more of glory than I ever could, but _Creators,_ do I miss you, _da’len_.”  It had been many years since Deshanna had been so affected that she shed tears for her long-lost child, but tonight she found herself moved to silent sobs, shaking against the great tree’s ancient strength. 

When she made the return trip, it was with _Asha’belannar_ at her side; it was as it always had been, as it always would be.

“You have carried a heavy burden, _lethallan._ ” The old witch’s voice was quiet and for once it felt immediately kind.  “It has been a long time since one of the People has held so dutifully to her end of so hard a bargain.”

Deshanna knew she should have felt proud at that praise, that once upon a time she would have _glowed_ from it.  Now she only felt older even than her many years.  “I will not do so for much longer, my lady.  This body will not allow me.”

“You have more strength even than you realize, Deshanna.  There are more reasons than simple convenience that you were chosen.”

The old Keeper scoffed at that.  “I am too old for such flattery, my lady _._ Or did you forget that I know better by now?”

The woman who walked beside her sighed, shaking her head with a kind of sadness Deshanna had only begun to understand in her last few years.  “I forget nothing.  I will not insult either of us by asking forgiveness you cannot give, but your sacrifice shall not be forgotten.  It will not be long now.”

“I know,” Deshanna answered on a heavy sigh, stopping at the foot of the trail to stare out into the hazy grey of pre-dawn.  “I can feel it coming.  So can they, though they do not know it.”

“The People have always been sensitive to such things.  One day they will remember how to understand it.  They will rise again when they are ready.  It will be beautiful to behold.”  It was as frustratingly enigmatic as anything else that ever came out of her mouth, but there was an undertone of finality to it that stirred fear and concern in the Keeper’s belly.

“Promise me, _Mamae_ …”  The endearment slipped out without her consent, a title she had not used in such a long time.  “Promise me you won’t do anything foolish.  Promise me you’ll stay safe.”

There was only silence for her answer, but Deshanna had expected nothing less.  She was, once more, alone.


End file.
